


Liberum Arbitrium

by EclecticMuse



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Deus Ex Machina, Drama, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, basically just AIDA and Jemma arguing, standoff - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 10:04:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10829037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EclecticMuse/pseuds/EclecticMuse
Summary: AIDA is not willing to give Fitz up. Jemma tries to reason with her. Canon speculation fic set after 4x20.





	Liberum Arbitrium

**Author's Note:**

> Since I feel really strongly about [this post](http://eclecticmuses.tumblr.com/post/160252018776/okay-but-i-have-been-lowkey-now-highkey-hoping) I made on Tumblr, I decided to try and parse my feelings about it out through fic. I likely have not done the concept justice at all, but hey, I tried. I'm dedicating this fic to she-took-the-midnight-train, because she had some very nice things to say about my writing when I was feeling really down about it. So thank you! I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> (Also I know canon is NOT gonna go down this way at all, but a girl can hope for something similar, can't she?)
> 
> I wrote this really quickly and it is unbeta'd so any mistakes, failure, or resemblance to garbage is all mine.
> 
> _liberum arbitrium_ \- 'free will' in Latin. I am not clever.

It’s the first time she’s seen Fitz--the real Fitz, _her_ Fitz--in nearly two weeks, but it feels like it’s been lifetimes. She’s lived a lifetime in the Framework, fighting to get him back. The relief that floods her at the sight of him, alive and whole, is so strong that she is a threat to cry, the prick of tears stinging her eyes. She wants nothing more than to run to him, to throw herself into his arms and never, ever let go. But though only mere yards separate them, it might as well be oceans.

AIDA has a firm grip on his wrist, and a gun raised at them. Likewise, the team all have guns trained on her as well. They’re locked in a standoff that shows no signs of breaking.

“I won’t let you control me anymore!” AIDA shouts, her jaw set and eyes blazing. “You _can’t_ control me. I’m not your slave. I have free will now, and _I_ decide what happens. _I_ make the choices. I deserve happiness, don’t I?” She jabs her gun in their direction. “I’m human now, just like you, and don’t all humans deserve to be happy? I’m choosing my own happiness. I’m choosing _him_.”

She pulls on Fitz’s wrist, tugging him toward her. He looks at her, eyes wide but face a blank mask, and an ugly twisting sensation boils up in Jemma’s gut.

“What about him?” Coulson’s voice is deceptively calm, his aim steady and never wavering. “What does he choose?”

“He loves me.” AIDA’s chin lifts before she glances aside at him. “Don’t you, Leopold?”

Fitz’s mouth works, opening and closing a few times, as if he isn’t sure what to say--as if he is afraid of countering her, of pushing her over the edge while she holds a gun in her hand. She is already so unhinged and dangerous; it wouldn’t take much to send her into a fury. For the briefest of seconds, his gaze darts to Jemma. Their eyes meet and her breath catches in her throat. Then he looks back to AIDA and swallows hard. “Ophelia…”

Jemma doesn’t know why he’s calling her that. Ophelia, Madame Hydra, whatever she chose to call herself, belongs to the Framework. AIDA is the mastermind pulling the strings, the android who desired a real human body, the one that is standing before them now. Maybe Fitz is trying to make a distinction between them that she doesn’t understand. Maybe he truly believes that the AIDA he knew in the Framework and the one the Darkhold’s science created are one and the same. She doesn’t know.

"You _love me_ ,” AIDA repeats, tightening her hold on Fitz’s wrist.  Desperation has crept into her voice, and it’s putting Jemma on edge. “You said you’d do anything for me, even cross the universe. You--you asked to come with me, when I came back here.”

“That was _him_ ,” Fitz says, trying to pull his hand back. She won’t let go. “I told you. That was--that was who I was _there_. Not me, not here. It can’t be.” He looks back at Jemma again. “I love--”

“But you do!” AIDA pulls at him again, turning to face him but still keeping her gun aimed at the team. “You were the only one who ever treated me with respect, Leopold. You treated me like a _person_ , like I had feelings, like what I felt mattered. You cared about me. Isn’t that love? That’s why I chose you, that’s why I fixed your regrets so we could be together--”

The ugly twisting boiling in Jemma’s gut swells up and overflows. She can’t take it anymore. “But that’s just it!” she cries, unconsciously taking a step forward into the no-man’s land between them. “You programmed him!”

AIDA’s head whips around to glare at her. Fitz’s eyes widen again, his free hand coming up, but Jemma doesn’t back down.

“Fitz only loved you in the Framework because you _made_ him love you,” she says, her nerves burning. “You wrote the code, set up his entire life, twisted him so he had no other choice but you. And love...love _is_ a choice. It’s a choice and it’s a decision you make every day. _That’s_ free will. But you never let Fitz have the chance to make that decision for himself. He cannot and _will not_ ever truly love you, because you took that choice away from him and forced it on him instead. You’re forcing it on him again _now_.”

AIDA’s stare turns steely and cold. “How dare you stand here and preach to me about _love_ , Jemma Simmons,” she spits, “when you’ve broken his heart so many times.” At Jemma’s sharp intake of breath, she continues, “I’ve seen all of his memories, I’ve seen all of the ways you’ve destroyed him. How you abandoned him when he was vulnerable and needed you, how he spent months pushing himself past his limits to find you, only for you to beg him to go back and rescue your lover. He’s given you everything and you’ve given him nothing but misery in return. You don’t deserve him.”

Jemma takes a deep breath, aware that the entire team is focused on her. AIDA’s words are nothing she hasn’t already told herself in her darkest moments, those times where she felt hopeless and that her crimes were too many and the chasm between her and Fitz might never be bridged. But now? She knows it isn’t true. They’ve suffered, and they’ve endured their hurts and doubts, but they’ve emerged stronger for it. Unbreakable, Radcliffe had said. A force to be reckoned with. She looks up, and finds that Fitz is already looking at her. His stare is steady, intense, fervent, the message in his eyes clear: _don’t believe her._

“Leopold deserves someone who can recognize all of his wonderful qualities and bring out the best in him, always,” AIDA says, looking confident, her lips curling into a smile as she looks aside at him again. “I can do that.”

“No,” Jemma says.

AIDA’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“No,” Jemma repeats, louder. Her voice is thick with emotion that she can’t quite contain. “I--I know I’ve hurt him. And I would give anything, _anything_ , to take it all back. He knows that. But--he still chooses me anyway. And I choose him. We choose each other, every single day. We make a conscious decision to stick together through everything, to let nothing tear us apart. And I will never, _never_ stop fighting for him, because I love him, and I know that he loves me.” It is a truth she knows in her bones, a truth that rises up and threatens to consume her with its righteousness as she stares across at Fitz and sees the love that she feels reflected back at her. Tears well up in her eyes again, and she blinks them back as she lowers her gun and takes another step forward in a final entreaty. “Fitz has already made his choice, here in this world. So please...please let him go.”

AIDA presses her lips down into a thin line. “Let him speak for himself. Leopold?”

It’s impossible how she seems to be so sure that Fitz will side with her, not after everything that’s happened, but Jemma can’t fathom a psychopath’s thought process. (It’s also funny how she’s willing to let Fitz speak _now_ , when she wasn’t earlier, but.)

Fitz tries one more time to--gently--pull his hand away, but AIDA still won’t relinquish her hold on him. He looks to Jemma again before squaring his shoulders, his eyes holding a wealth of things unsaid, of things he doesn’t have to say, and it is clear he is aware that his next words may cost him his life. “I choose Jemma,” he says quietly, with conviction.

But it isn’t Fitz’s life they need to be worried about. AIDA’s face flushes with rage, and she pulls Fitz in close to her as she tightens her grip on her gun, levelling it square at the center of Jemma’s chest. “I won’t let _you_ take him away from me--”

It all happens so quickly. Later, Jemma won’t be able to parse the sequence of events out. All she knows is that AIDA’s finger is on the trigger, Coulson, May, and Daisy are yelling, taking aim with their own guns, and she is bringing hers back up to bear, but none of them will be quick enough. Fitz realizes this, his eyes wide and his mouth open in a scream of her name, and the gut-wrenching anguish in his voice tears at her heart. _Oh, Fitz_ , she thinks in the split-second before AIDA fires. _I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you._  

Suddenly, she is being pushed roughly to the side. In the space of time that it has taken him to move two steps, Robbie Reyes has transformed into Ghost Rider, taking the bullet meant for Jemma with no effect to himself. She looks up from where she’s fallen to the ground as he stares AIDA down in silence, flames licking up around the grotesque skull that’s replaced his head. Then he advances on her.

AIDA shoots again, and again, but the bullets do nothing. Panic takes over her, followed by terror, and before she can run, the Rider grabs her viciously by the throat. Jemma knows the briefest moment of fear for Fitz, who AIDA is still clinging to, but she trusts that even in the guise of the Rider, Robbie would never hurt him.

The struggle is brief, the judgment quick. AIDA screams as the flames consume her, her flesh-and-bone body no match for the supernatural powers of the Ghost Rider. He burns her up until there is nothing left but a puff of ash.

Then silence reigns.

The Rider stands still, looking down at the empty space where AIDA had just stood. Nearby, Coulson and May watch as Daisy smiles with a grim, savage sort of satisfaction. But Jemma only has eyes for Fitz.

He’d staggered back as soon as AIDA had let go of him, caught in the throes of her agony. Now he was hovering unsteadily, looking shellshocked, finally free from his abusive captor. Jemms scrambles to her feet and races to him, her hands immediately going to frame his face as she reaches him. “Fitz--”

She repeats his name, over and over, as she presses their foreheads together and his hands go to her waist, as his legs give out and they both sink to their knees on the ground. She can’t stop herself from running her fingers over his cheeks, his jaw, his shoulders, through his hair, to remind herself that he is here and whole and he may be hurt inside but he is _Fitz_ and that is all that matters to her.

“Jemma,” he whispers as his arms slide around her back. His voice is shaking. “Jemma, I’m so sorry.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t have to apologize,” she says, and kisses his cheeks. “It wasn’t you.”

She knows her words are likely falling on deaf ears right now. She knows Fitz better than she knows herself, and knows he is likely being crushed beneath a sea of self-recrimination and loathing. She knows it will take a long time for him to heal from this, if he ever even fully does. But, if she starts now, maybe one day he will believe her.

“No, but-- _Jemma_.” There are tears in his eyes. “All the--all the things I did. I _remember_ it. I felt it. I killed Agnes, I--I killed Mace, I had Daisy _tortured_...and you, oh god, yo _u_...I _shot_ you, Jemma, I put a gun to your head and I had every intention of killing you--”

 “But that wasn’t really you!” she cries, taking his face in her hands again and forcing him to look her in the eyes. “That was who AIDA manipulated you to be, who she made you be! That’s not who _you_ are. The man I love would never, ever hurt me. I trust that. I want you to trust it, too.”

This time it’s Fitz who shakes his head, looking lost. “Jemma, I can’t….I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Her heart threatens to splinter in two at the injustice of it all, that AIDA could break such a good, decent man, but Jemma holds strong. “If you can’t trust yourself,” she says, “then trust me.” She takes his hand between both of her own and clasps it firmly against her chest, over her heart. “You are Leopold James Fitz and you are a good man. A brilliant man, a funny man, kind and open and loyal and infinitely caring, with so much to give to the world. _You are a good man_. And I love you, so very much. With every ounce of my being, every molecule in my body, every atom.” She takes a deep breath. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you’ll have me. I want to grow old with you. I never want to be apart from you”

Fitz’s jaw goes slack, his eyes glassy. “Jemma…?”

Her heart races. “After you were taken...your--replacement. The LMD. It said...it mentioned marriage. It said you’d been thinking about it. It had your brain, your thoughts, after all. I said I’d tell you when I saw you again.” She takes another deep breath. “So...this is me asking.” She lifts a hand to cup his cheek and gives him a tremulous smile. “Fitz...will you marry me?”

The tears in his eyes finally spill over. In lieu of an answer, he pulls her to him in a crushing hug and buries his face in her neck, breaking down in sobs. It’s the only answer Jemma needs right now, and as they cling to one another on a rocky seashore while their teammates and friends look on, she thinks that it might be their very first step toward rebuilding their shattered lives together.


End file.
